False Fact. Public services need to be privatized because government is inefficient and costly.
True Fact: It's a lie. Michael Edwards, activist and author, explains in his book Small Change that the inherent nature of business with its profit-seeking motive and its short-term perspective and demands makes business unable to come even close to solving hardcore problems like poverty, epidemics, war, social discord, and the like.16 I would simply add this question: How many business firms, large or small, can you name that are making significant inroads on such problems?
Yet the public sector is increasingly being taken over by the private sector. Privatization, argue Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, co-authors of The Fox in the Henhouse, is the private sector's way to "undercut, limit, shrink, or outright take over any government and any part of the public sector that stands in the way of corporate pursuit of ever larger profits and could be run for profit."17
Assaulting the false facts with the true ones is bound to aggravate people who hold fast to the false facts. That is why the truths are in this Preface as sort of a "caveat emptor."
Here's a quick overview of this book. It's a substantial distillation of and addition to my relevant books and articles on the subject. The first chapter may seem very abstract, but believe me, it is about very real matters, life itself. This chapter lays the groundwork for understanding why the power elite do what they do and what happens when they do it. The second chapter explains the very nature of power and introduces my concept and illustration of the "power tower" with the elite at the top and the "les Mise'rables" at the very bottom with several levels in between. Chapter Three probes what makes the power elite "tick" by looking inside their "black boxes." When you read this chapter, you will understand that I don't flippantly ascribe evil motives and evildoing to the power elite. Chapter Four thoroughly describes and explains the power elite's "badvantages," my term for situations and circumstances that give advantage to bad behavior. For example, "our" government gives many handouts to its master, Corporate America. Chapter Five describes the seemingly limitless bad behavior of the power elite and their functionaries of the corpocracy. I want to warn you about Chapter Six. It is a true horror story of the consequences of the power elite's evil doing. By the time you have finished reading this chapter you may be a bit depressed if you believe it is credible. As an antidote I'll try to inject some homespun humor now and then, starting now. "There is no beating around the Bush, he is what he is." And finally, Chapter Seven asks whether the power tower with its power inequality can be changed to the power rectangle with its power equality; in other words, can the living field finally be levelled? This question explains the question mark at the end of the book's subtitle. Putting there instead an exclamation mark would have been sheer balderdash.
Now, here's a quick overview about me and my intentions.
First, it's not my intent to vilify with a broad brush ALL Americans of wealth and influence. One can find Americans of wealth and influence who are not evildoers or evildoers all the time. Mark Baiada is but one example. He is founder and CEO of East Coast-based Bayada Home Health Care. He took $20 million from his own personal funds to distribute as employee bonuses. It was not another one of those "guilt philanthropies." He says he "spent a lot of time reflecting on what has gotten us to this point and what I am particularly thankful for."18 There are more like Mr. Baiada, just not nearly enough of them. And you will read in the last chapter about crusader Ralph Nader's contention that "only the super-rich can save us."19
And what about politicians? Are they all morally handicapped and corrupt? Recall the late humorist Will Rogers quip that "We have the best Congress money can buy." I would call his quip a "semitrue fact." Occasionally, even one or more politicians do something that at least appears to be honorable rather than posturing. We shall encounter an example in the last chapter.
Second, I am a pacifist, having been born and reared as a Quaker. I have never owned or shot a gun. But I am not a bleeding-heart liberal or socialist. Far from it! But my blood boils and my tears well up over the fiendish death and destruction caused by our evildoers, their wasting of our money and their contempt for the common good.
Third, I never make assertions on serious matters without having thoroughly researched them. That habit is ingrained in me after earning two graduate research degrees, so you will find an abundance or even an overabundance of footnotes throughout the book, starting with some for this preface. How many book prefaces have you read that had footnotes?
Fourth, I believe what I see, not the other way around. Too many Americans have been indoctrinated or conditioned over time by liars to see what they believe, one reason for widespread acceptance of the power elites' lies.
Fifth, my career specialty was organizational psychology, which means, facetious speaking, that I "treated" sick organizations. And believe you me, every large organization in America's corpocracy is very, very sick. I retired in 1995 after a long career of working for industry, the non-profit research business and the U.S. federal government. I must shamefully confess that during the Vietnam War I muted my criticism of it for worry of endangering my career and my family.
Sixth, after retiring I turned my attention to politics and history, especially the true history of America from its outset to now. I could not have written this book or some of its predecessors without knowing that history.
And lastly, you may wonder if I hate America. I do not! I am a patriot in the positive sense who says, "America, please do what is right, not what is wrong," in stark contrast to the jingoistic patriot who proclaims proudly, "My country right or wrong," a popular sentiment among the brainwashed Germans who blindly followed their Fuhrer. What I hate is what America's power elite is unceasingly and harmfully doing to America's own people, to people throughout the world and to the environment of the one planet on which we all live.
I am dedicating this book to all activists and organizations seeking world peace and socioeconomic justice. If they are like me, their hearts are heavy, and their task is never done and always seems futile.
I am also dedicating this book to the late Howard Zinn, the author of a book on American history that is a must read.20 I dedicated my previous book to him, which shows how indebted a follower I am. Like my previous book, I could not have written the one you have in your hands were it not for Mr. Zinn's illuminating history book that tells the true history of America. The power elite understandingly hate Mr. Zinn's book. The former governor of my home state, for example, was gleeful upon hearing of Mr. Zinn's death and promptly banned his book statewide from high school curricula.21 Is it any wonder that my high school history classes in the 1950's remain the same today, "trivialized, militarized and numbing?"22
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